Tag: merchandise

I recently added some Chosokabe Mon Zazzle merchandise to my store with he help of the quick create facility of Zazzle. The reason is that I really want to put more products in the store and maybe create a bit more revenue. Quick create of Zazzle allows for the creation of a whole range of products in one go. One of the results is this example:

Earning a steady income from Zazzle is more difficult then I previous thought. I did some research in order to find some succesful Zazzle sellers and I found one paricular seller on which I’ll blog perhaps later. A couple of things I found out was that to be succesful you really need more products than a couple of hundreds, more likely in the thousends is desired.

Another thing is marketing your products. Most often a succesful seller has websites specifically to sell categories of products. Or a blog to attract trafic to your merchandise. The blog or website can also be used for advertisement, such as Google Adsense or sponsered links in the blog post itself.

Obviously my marketing is pittyfull and I need to come up with a solution. This website is unfit for specifically marketing for instance Chosokabe Mon Zazzle merchandise. The website name and URL is not very interesting for this purpose. The design of the website is a bit old and not ery suited for displaying product.

Therefor I was thinking to start a new website with a new URL, geared towards selling stuff on the internet. I’ll use a standard template, because I don’t want to waste time and energy in building a website. I just want to configure it. It’ll be only a small investment and a good experiment. It should be possible to create a steady income stream from the internet, so I’m not giving up yet.

I’m always looking out for space merchandise, especially if it is well made. In our modern world you can buy an enormous amount of junk and trinkets, just look at the stores in you main street and see the plastic thrash everywhere. A webshop like Zazzle takes it a step further, billions of crappy designs are already shlepped onto a growing list of “useful” products. Are people rally buying that muck?

Sometimes a company wants to make a small amount of objects, do it well and put their heart and soul into it. Such a company is Greenwood Space Travel Supply Co. They make this for instance:

Their products are fun but can also be inspiring. And do “space products” not say; “Hey, I’m into science, rational thought and the future”? Well, at least they are my crowd. For me they inspire me to create better and more original designs and I’ll keep searching for these kind of businesses. And maybe I’ll start my own Space Merchandise business.

And an important correction. So, how did I go last year. It’s been a strange year, 2010, a year ago I feared for my job and Euroland was heading for a meltdown. I still got my job, at least for 2011, and the Euro didn’t collapsed, yet.

Money wise I saved like crazy and I was capable to make some gains. Unfortunately my spreadsheet contained a mistake by which my gains looked way too positive. I look of course to the real amount so I didn’t noticed. My fictive total amount in assets stood at 130 (I started at 100 December 1st 2009) and that was a little bit too steep. The last two moths witch corrected data look like this:

January 1st 2011

Amount

Percentage

Stock

7.09

6.18%

Bonds

0.00

0.00%

Cash

103.12

89.81%

Gold

4.61

4.02%

Total

114.83

100.00%

December 1st 2010

Amount

Percentage

Stock

6.42

5.79%

Bonds

0.00

0.00%

Cash

100.08

90.36%

Gold

4.26

3.84%

Total

110.76

100.00%

All in all, last year I increased my assets with more than 10% and I’m completely debt free. The amount is nicely going in a direction I’m aiming at. Also, I started buying commodity funds for my “Gold” asset class and in two months it did quite well. Resolutions for 2011, less Cash more funds.